Austrian media reported that December 29 was the busiest day on record for ski areas in the Salzburgerland, Austria. Salzburger Nachrichten writes that good weather and perfect snow conditions attracted lots of day trippers to the popular ski areas in the area around Salzburg. Combined with a seasonal peak in vacationers, this last minute influx resulted in some extremely crowded days on the Austrian slopes.
December is a busy time everywhere in the Alps. Lots of families from lower areas such as Germany or the Netherlands spend their Christmas holidays in popular winter sports destinations in Europe´s main mountain range. Austria is one of the main destinations for winter sports. This year, last minute day trippers made the holiday season extra busy. Ski and snowboard lovers look at weather and snow predictions to make a decision on short notice. According to Salzburger Nachrichten, this was exactly the case last week.
These last minute decision makers brought double digit growth compared to last year for the Christmas holidays. This resulted in very busy ski areas in and around the Salzburg ski area. Popular ski areas in the region include the famous Zell am See, Ski Amadé as well as Saalbach.
Salzburg crowd predictions
At Avoid Crowds we have daily crowd predictions for several destinations in Austria. Using travel patterns as well as data on school vacations and public holidays we predict daily tourist crowds in both Vienna and Salzburg.
